


Faded Lotus

by SheWhoWillRise



Series: Sequoia [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 23:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWhoWillRise/pseuds/SheWhoWillRise
Summary: In a world full of magic, soulmates are easy to find. If you know how to look. A perfect match, the other half of your soul. They would appear as a mark on your skin, much like a tattoo, on your eighteenth birthday. Every pair had a unique mark special to them.Sadly, not everyone would find their soulmate in their lifetime. Some would die too young while others lived continents away. When your soulmate dies, your mark would fade to grey, sometimes even disappearing altogether. Legend says that for every happy pair, there are three unhappy pairs.This is a story about such a pair.





	Faded Lotus

**Author's Note:**

> If you follow me on tumblr then you know who Alex Stark and D'Amore Wilson are. Maria Maxon is Alex Stark.  
> This was written for my creative writing class final. The number one rule is that it has to be original fiction and cannot be fanfiction what-so-ever. So i just took my fanfiction ocs and changed some things around.

In a world full of magic, soulmates are easy to find. If you know how to look. A perfect match, the other half of your soul. They would appear as a mark on your skin, much like a tattoo, on your eighteenth birthday. Every pair had a unique mark special to them.

Sadly, not everyone would find their soulmate in their lifetime. Some would die too young while others lived continents away. When your soulmate dies, your mark would fade to grey, sometimes even disappearing altogether. Legend says that for every happy pair, there are three unhappy pairs.

This is a story about such a pair.

Maria was a curious girl growing up. Her blue eyes would light up with quizativity when she found something she didn’t understand. Her lips would purse in thought as her brain cogged its gears to find a reason, solution, or answer.

She was nine years old when she asked her father what the grey dove was on his arm. He looked at her with a sad smile and told her it was a symbol of love. Love he had with her late mother.

“What was mother like?” she asked him, brushing her fingers carefully over the grey dove.

“She was kind and gentle,” he said. He lifted her up onto his hip and brought her to the window in the foyer and pushed the heavy drapes aside.

“She loved the ocean,” he said, “Which is why we named you Maria. Lady of the sea is what your mother said it meant.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Did she look like me?”

“You look exactly like her, right down to the same dimples,” he said, pinching said dimples. She giggled and hid her face where his shoulder met his neck.

“You’re a lot like her too. You’re respectful and kind and amazing.”

“How do you know when you get one?” she asked.

“There’s pain, but it’s quick and you forget about it when you feel that exhilaration of having a soulmate.”

Across the country a lone mother that was bone tired, working two jobs and considering a third one just to put money on the table and keep the water running. Her son needed new shoes, and her daughter needed bras now too. She sighed, looking at her wrist, rubbing the faded rose that sat there.

“What’s that mother?” her son, D’Amore, asked, coming up behind her. She smiled sadly and took his hands in hers.

“That’s my rose,” she said, “it’s a symbol of your father’s and my love for each other.”

“Aren’t roses supposed to be red?” he asked. Tears started falling from her eyes.

“Normally yes, but when your father passed away, it faded.” He had a frown on his face as he touched his mother’s rose.

“What color was it?”

“It was red.”

_ Maria was in a ditch missing a leg when she got her soulmark. It started as an itch on the back of her right shoulder before turning into a burning pain that she would have screamed at if not for the pain in her leg. _

_ She smiled through the pain. She was going to die before she met her soulmate. Dying on her eighteenth birthday was a bummer, but now dying and leaving her soulmate alone forever? Tragic. It was truly the irony of fate. _

_ “General!” a voice yelled through the forest that surrounded her. “General!” _

_ “He-Here!” she choked out through her tears. “I’m here!” _

_ The face of her Lieutenant came into view, his face concerned as he looked at her. _

_ “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I don’t want to die, not yet.” She started crying. _

_ “Hey, hey I got you, okay? I got you,” the Lieutenant said, taking out gauze and wrapped her leg. He pushed an arm under her shoulders and carefully did the same with her leg, holding the missing leg close to his chest. She reached over to his shoulder slowly to grip his walkie-talkie. _

_ “I have the General,” he said into it, “and she needs medical stat. Meet at rendezvous alpha lima papa.” She gripped onto the walkie the best she could before blacking out, fading to the Lieutenant’s frantic pleas and shaking for her to stay awake. _

D’Amore was sixteen when he joined the rebellion. He was skeptical of it at first, being run by the daughter of the Prime Minister of Alvania, but each winning battle for the rebels showed how true her intentions were against her father.

In just two and a half short years he gained ranks, coming to be the Lieutenant for the daughter, the General. It haunted him how similar she looked to her father. Many say she’s the splitting image of her mother, but her mother didn’t have that jaw line, or the broad shoulders that commanded respect. Her skill with a sword rivaled that of her father’s. She was truly his daughter. A military genius and a commanding personality that demanded that you stare as she annihilates you.

He fell in love with that personality. Serving as her right hand, he spent every waking moment with her. He was the first to know of her plans and strategies. He was her go-to soldier, more so after his co-Lieutenant, Barbara Wayne, died six months ago.

_ It was in the middle of battle, they had lost contact with the General about an hour ago. He was frantic, trying to make heads or tales of the situation that had gone down south. Everyone was shouting on the walkie-talkies, asking for support, announcing men were down, and some never spoke on it again after being cut off. _

_ “Any status on the General?” a static voice rang through, the commander that had stormed the north gate. _

_ “None sir,” D’Amore said, grunting as he ducked behind a truck hoping not to get shot. “Last known location was inside the building.” _

_ “I saw the General leave through the south entrance, running after some soldiers,” a third voice came through. _

_ “Enroute,” D’Amore said into the walkie before running to the south entrance. He didn’t make it far before he fell to the ground, feeling pain spike through his shoulder. He ignored it, guessing it was a gunshot and kept running to find the General. _

_ He nearly fell to his knees when he saw her in a ditch, bleeding into the mud. _

When he had gotten to medical, he asked them to look at his shoulder. Nothing was wrong with it, in fact they said it was his soulmark. A simple lotus flower, outlined with white.

Lotuses were native to their country, the country they were trying to save.

The General recovered after three months and was commanding troops like nothing happened. It didn't stop the Lieutenant from worrying though.

She lost another limb a few months later. It was her right arm. The burns spread out from the stump across her shoulder and half of her back. She still remembered what her soulmark was. A white lotus. Her favorite flower.

She got a tattoo of her soulmark after the surgery for her prosthesis. She had it put on her left shoulder. She might not know when her soulmate dies, but at least they would still be with her.

D’Amore’s soulmark was in a constant dull pain. The legend says that if someone lost their soulmark, their soulmate would feel the pain of the missing link. 

‘ _ If they lost their mark, that must mean they are in this war _ ,’ he thought, but every other person he knew lost their arms or legs. It would take twice as long as the war to find his soulmate. He pushed the thought of a soulmate to the back of his mind. He had the freedom of his country to think about.

The General had commanded the troops to storm the west command center of the Alvania Military. They had thought that the Prime Minister wouldn’t know they were going to attack, but when they were ambushed, they were proven wrong.

_ “Such a weak little rebellion, daughter,” her father laughed, twirling a gun in his hand. His black leather trench coat splattered with blood that was not his own. His other hand ran across his face, wiping off the blood and dirt. The streaks leftover made him look like he was scarred with scratches, giving his menacing look a disturbing edge of true horror. _

_ “You are no father of mine,” the General growled and shot at him, a last-ditch attempt to end it all. It bounced right off his coat, making him smile even crueler before it morphed into anger. He knocked the gun out of her hand with his own bullet. _

_ She cried out, holding her hand, the blood dripping through her metal fingers. He got down to her and pulled on her hair, distracting her from the pain of her hand and leg, which got a bullet wound from his general, who now lay dead on her father’s front staircase. His breath was hot on her cheek, a degrading heat that turned cold in her veins. She whined through her teeth, pinching her bottom lip. _

_ “Any last words,” he said, laughing cruelly as he pressed the gun to her stomach. Her arm still gushed blood and her leg bleeding out heavily. No matter what she said to get him to let her go, she was going to die anyway from the blood loss. _

_ “There will always people like you, but there will always people like us.” She gasped for breath. “To fight you. Forever and always.” _

_ He snarled, nose wrinkling, yellow teeth showed through dirty lips. A shot rang out across the field, mixing with the others, insignificant in this war as the others. It felt as if her whole body collapsed in on itself. Her chest heaved as it tried to get a breath in as if it trying to inflate it back to its original state. _

Half way through the battle D’Amore felt the pain on his shoulder spike, like when he first got it, he cried out in pain as he fell into the muddy ground.

_ “I already have two-thirds of the world under my control. Your tiny little brigade is weak against my army. Tell me, what glory do you gain from this?” He swept his free hand across the battlefield, gesturing to all the dead bodies of her soldiers. They all laid emotionless, blank, and still. Tears fell down her face. _

_ “From all this death?” He looked back to her, to gloat about how he had won, only to get a knife in his neck. _

He gripped his shoulder. His soulmate was dying.

_ “I'm sorry for failing you,” she said with her last dying breath, hoping it reached her soulmate. _

**His soulmate died six years ago, right here, in this field that he stands in now. The faded lotus on his shoulder reminds him of that everyday. The world is free now, thanks to him and the not dead Barbara Wayne.**

**“You didn’t fail us Maria Maxon,” he said to the wind, hoping it reached her ears, wherever she was.**

**Author's Note:**

> So like the first note said, if you follow me on tumblr then you know who Alex Stark/Maria Maxon is. Well then you also know Alex Stark is Tony Stark's daughter. But you also know from following me that I am a Tony Stark fan so you're probably wondering "omg why did you make Tony evil??" Well to hide the fact that I'm basically writing fanfiction, I decided to darth vader him. (and he's a nerd so he would so love me for darth vadering him okay).
> 
> Also you might recognize some of this from my "Lost Souls" piece, go check it out!
> 
> So leave a comment if you liked it and follow me on [**tumblr**](http://captainleonardmccoy.tumblr.com)!


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